Can You Say Defense?

Men’s Basketball Team Hits Hurdles But Wins Fourth Straight

SportsKevin Duarte — Published January 8, 2012

It took a full 40 minutes and some team perseverance, but Concordia’s men’s basketball team are now 4-0 in the season after last Thursday’s 73-60 victory over the Université du Québec à Montréal Citadins.

The game got off to a great start for the Stingers. Their hard offence early in the first forced Citadins head coach Olga Hrycak to call a timeout. This proved to be beneficial for the opposition as they only trailed by three by quarter’s end.

In fact this caused the game to get physical in the second. Both teams couldn’t seem to get off the free throw line. Stingers’ head coach, John Dore, had to use all 12 players to balance out his team’s personal fouls.

But with time running out in the half, Concordia’s high pressure defence forced the Citadins into making turnovers. Before long they were capitalizing on UQAM’s mistakes and converting buckets on the other end. The Stingers led 34-28 at halftime.

This strong defensive play continued in the third as the Citadins struggled to break their tough man-to-man defence. But UQAM made up for this with ConU’s penalty trouble.

“In the third, they only had one basket in the whole quarter,” said Dore referring to his opponents. “But, they had 17 points from the foul line, so that kept them in the game.”

All that was put to rest in the fourth, when Stingers guard Decee Krah sunk a couple of treys, opening a 10-point lead. Concordia ended the game up by 13.

The Stingers came into the game ranked tenth in the national Canadian Interuniversity Sport’s rankings. A second place finish at the Rod Shoveller Memorial Basketball tournament at the Dalhousie University last week has the team feeling confident about their level of play.

“We’ve been playing together for two or three years now,” said Stingers guard Kyle Desmarais, who finished the game with 16 points, three assists and four rebounds. “We know how everyone plays and we’re very comfortable around each other.”

“We’re a good passing team,” said Krah, who ended the game with 15 points, four assists and five rebounds. “So, it’s just a matter of us moving the ball and getting those open shots.”

The Stringers face UQAM again when they pay them a visit January 14. Tip-off is at
4:00 p.m.